Methods for presenting information by using voice or the sense of touch has been proposed, focusing on cases of presenting information to users moving or driving, visually-impaired people, and the like. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 10 (1998)-69218 is directed toward providing an interface which allows visually-impaired people to use window-compatible software with an interface to display window structure and functions of software on a tactile display and output window names and the like by voice when a user touches tactile pins.
International Publication WO00/17739 discloses an information processing apparatus for visually impaired people. Information is displayed on a tactile input/output device including input/output means arranged in a two-dimensional matrix. When a user inputs an operation on a predetermined area of the tactile input/output device, voice corresponding to the operation is outputted.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,278,441 discloses a tactile interface system provided with a plurality of displays including at least one tactile display. The plurality of displays display data selected from different portions of multiple data field environment.
Generally, the amount of information that can be transmitted per unit time is considered to decrease in order of the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. For example, rich text information which is information presented to the sense of sight is added with information concerning important parts, document structure, and the like by providing the information with attribute information such as character size, character decoration including bold, italic, or the like, and layout including line feed and indent in addition to text information as language information. Therefore, if information which should be presented through the sense which allows a larger amount of information to be transmitted per unit time is presented through another sense, understanding the information becomes difficult because of the excessive information, or there arises such a problem that part of information is lost.